Logically, the other NFL owners should be seeing the public attention the transcripts are getting, reading the resulting articles and realizing in their heart of hearts that Goodell so thoroughly screwed this up as to make his ruling a joke. The penalty should now be seen by all of them for what it is.
And let's set aside the ones with Patriots vendettas, such as the Jets, Ravens and Colts. Those guys are so compromised that they simply cannot act rationally. They are the ownership equivalents of dopes like Mike Felger, Ben Volin, Bob Kravitz and Dan Shaughnessy. But everyone else in the ownership should be beating down Roger's door and pleading with him to end the madness. Offer Tom whatever it takes to settle this damn thing.
That they are not, and that the NFL is not rushing now to settle and end the freaking madness is a discredit to all involved. A big one. History and even the present will not look kindly on them.
And my fear is that it actually goes the other way. At this point, the NFL looks like a complete clown show. I fear that their only hope and remaining move is go all in, and pray that Berman gets caught up in his deferential underwear and gives them a win in court. That wont remove the stain of the transcript and the obvious conclusion that Goodell was totally partial and chose to railroad Tom. But winning would become the headline and the story, and would obfuscate the rest, quite sadly.
That a bunch of no good misanthropes like Goodell, Vincent, Kensil, Biscotti and Irsay could be on one side, and could be inflicting severe reputational harm on a player of Tom Brady's stature and, I think*, character, is one of the more pathetic things I have seen in sports...ever. It's right up there with the Ben Dreith Game and the Olympics screw job the refs visited on the US basketball team in favor of the Russians, in terms of its sheer stupidity and insanity. You can make arguments about which is worse, but the total insanity of the circumstances here, and the unfairness of it all, is in the same general vicinity of most anything, I think. Really, a sniveling little piece of shit like Goodell having any ability to reduce Tom's standing over "general awareness" of other people MAYBE messing with ball pressure, is one for the ages.
Rant over.
* Of course, I don't know Tom and he could kill kittens for fun when the cameras are not rolling. My observation is based on 15 years of watching him carefully and concluding that he's a genuinely good guy. And, yes Simone, I know a few people who know him, including my late Aunt, who knew him and Giselle reasonably well. They all say the same kinds of things about him.